I am getting a lot of errors when starting RAD7. The server doesn't respond to class changes. Sometimes the server won't start. Sometimes RAD will not acknowledge modules that I added to the server. It is kind of buggy.
I know there is metadata in the workspace, are there safe ways to clean the metadata or RAD in general?
Where RAD = Rational Application Developer
Another tip is to remove all projects in your Servers view in Eclipse, stop your server, start your server, open the admin console of your server and see that everything is gone in there as well. If you still see configured apps, remove them in the admin console. Shutdown server, start again and check for a clean startup. This ensures that your Eclipse server plugin and the server are in sync. Now you can add your projects to the server again; maybe this will improve the stability.
If not, a more drastic measure is to remove your server config in Eclipse (don't remove the server itself) and add it again in the Servers view.
You can also try to disable automatic publishing. You can go to Preferences->Server and uncheck the "Automatically publish..." If you are using WAS you additionally can double-click on your server in the Servers view, and go to the "Automatic Publishing" section and check "Never publish automatically". This might give you more control over when stuff gets published to your server, although it sometimes has a mind of its own and keeps publishing automatically in some cases.
eljenso has posted a good half of the answer. For the server not picking up resources, verify you are publishing. Right click the server and hit publish (I personally leave auto-pub off) The admin console / uninstall ear / then re-adding the ear is another way to go, however in RAD I've never needed to do this. In WID you need to do this as the publish is hopelessly broken in that God-forsaken tool.
RAD fixes: Another half of the puzzle that you haven't touched on is making sure your project workspace is all up to date. Sometimes you will get bleeding (build errors) even though you know it's crabbing about nothing. When this occurs, close all the projects, optional step: shut down rad and re-open rad, re-open projects, refresh all projects, then do another build/clean.
ClearCase fixes: If you happen to be using clearcase you're really in a world of hurt when things bleed for no reason. Before you do what I listed above, you'll need to do an update, restore (yes I'm aware update is supposed to do what a restore does and more - but it doesn't because it operates off of cached data, so it only updates what it thinks it needs to update. Unfortunately the caching algorithm is flawed), then refresh. This will guarantee all the files have been pushed to your file system properly, now you need to do the aforementioned step to make RAD pick up the [possibly new] file changes that just got pushed to your file system.
If you're working with a large project and you have RAD + clearcase, sit back and relax, it's going to be a while to let that restore finish. It's best to try just update, refresh + RAD fixes and see if that fixes the problem first. Restore should be your last ditch effort on a large project. (If you have a small project just do everything every time).
Eclipse can take a -clean parameter on startup. Perhaps this is what you are looking for?
If you really need to wipe all of the workspace meta, deleting the .metadata directory within the workspace should do the trick. Note that this wipes out settings, workspace layout, and even which projects are available (you will need to re-import all of your old projects, despite the fact that they are still in the workspace dir).
If you need to purge your metadata settings, try just deleting .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources first! That saved me quite a bit of trouble...
